It’s the time of year where I remember how important it is to schedule everything to maximize daylight hours, and also take into consideration the sun is lower in the sky, making it sort of painful on the eyes at certain times of day, but completely useless (or at cross-purposes) as task lighting.

LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS & DEMANDS

It’s also important as the days get shorter to do LIGHTER scheduling than in brighter months; you can’t squeeze in as much. Your energy wanes, it is more difficult to SEE to do things … you just have fewer hours in the day to be energetic and active; your schedule should reflect these limitations, lowering your expectations and demands.

COMMIT TO HOUSEWORK NEAR NOON

In the summer it makes sense to do housework as early in the morning as possible, whereas in darker months it’s best to commit to getting a solid hour of your most detail-oriented cleaning chores done between noon and two.

ADJUST CONTENT CREATION SCHEDULE TO TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF SPECIAL DARK-SEASON LIGHT

Shooting content with natural light can be awesome in darker seasons; your chances of cloud cover / diffused light during the day is higher for nice even lighting, and golden hours are more achievably targeted. If you prefer (or are limited) to put on makeup and fix your hair with natural light, though, you really have to factor that in and schedule enough time to do it.

FOCUS ON NERD WORK AND PROMOTION

Darker days are best for writing, webmastery, and marketing: harvesting, creating and putting out advertising to maximize sales at the busiest buying time of the year. You also have people in similarly darker locales spending more time at home in front of their screens, available to apply their recreational money towards pleasurable entertaining best enjoyed indoors.

SLEEP AND RISE EARLIER

It’s the time of year where it makes sense to GO TO SLEEP EARLIER (especially with this country’s inability to stop “falling back”), and aim to become more of a morning person. If you miss out on the sun early in the day, chances are you’re just not going to get any. And that is unhealthy as fuck. Don’t spend all the daylight sitting static inside, not even taking time to look out of windows.

ENJOY NERDY INTROVERT PLEASURES YOURSELF

Allow yourself to schedule time off doing restful cozy dreamy shit while your energy is lower; it’s curl up with a book season, so enjoy it! It’s better to let yourself do restorative low-energy activities you enjoy than to deplete your energy trying to force yourself to do the same amount of stuff you’d do with more active light hours. You’ll end up burning out, getting sick … or doing junk activities like binging food and tv and games that wind up throwing your schedule out of whack even more, making you feel bad about yourself, and increasing your lethargy.

Instead take long hot baths or showers. Enjoy burning more calories taking walks in the peaceful cold and gloom. Read for pleasure, or do recreational (or work-related) learning projects for fun and self-improvement.